The real Dizzy rascal
Benjamin Disraeli
This year is the 175th anniversary of the publication of Benjamin Disraeli’s novel, The Young Duke — an event that will pass, if not quite without notice, then certainly without celebration. Disraeli had many faults as a novelist: an inability to create characters, he was careless of plot — always, the reader must be aware that he would willingly sacrifice integrity for euphony, meaning for a resounding phrase. His floridity betrays not complexity, but simplicity of thought.
Lord David Cecil believed that, “Disraeli’s novels, for all their brilliance, are not strictly speaking novels. They are not, that is, meant to be realistic pictures of life, but discussions upon political and religious questions put into fictional form.” This is certainly true of the trilogy — Coningsby, Sybil and Tancred — three novels, which, when taken together, detail the manifesto of young England.
Another member of this coterie dedicated to gothic absurdities, Lord John Manners defined the struggle against creeping, invidious Benthamism in the following couplet: “Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die / But leave us still our old nobility.” Not only ludicrous politics, but, what is worse, bad poetry. Though from the same stable as Disraeli politically, Lord John was handicapped by a superfluity of Romanticism — a devotee of lost causes.
The trilogy advocates the power of individualism when allied to youth, the unifying and benignant power of a monarchy untrammelled by a manipulative Whiggish junta and the decaying potential of the Church as a remedial agency. The real genius of all three works, and most particularly, Sybil, lies in a graphic depiction of England’s problems, rather than the advocacy of a solution.
Disraeli’s panacea for an ailing nation appears to be the revival and extension of monarchical power — scarcely pertinent to the practical politics of the 1840s. The following exchange created the household phrase, the two nations: “Well, society may be in its infancy,” said Egremont slightly smiling; “but, say what you like, our Queen reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed.” “Which nation?” asked the younger stranger, “for she reigns over two.
The stranger paused; Egremont was silent, but looked inquiringly. “Yes,” resumed the younger stranger after a moment’s interval.
“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.” “You speak of••” said Egremont, hesitatingly. “THE RICH AND THE POOR. Exquisite drama and splendid propaganda, but realising the magnitude of a problem is but a preparatory step to solving it. If then, one does not read Disraeli for political insight, how will he survive the canonical winnowing process. By virtue, I say, of sheer exuberance and vitality. Does Disraeli affect magniloquence, or is rhetoric his natural key? It is the riddle of his personality to which no•one can supply the answer.
Robert Blake has written that Disraeli “lacked the imagination” to create characters. Rather, his characters seem paste and cardboard only because of their propinquity to the brilliancy of Disraeli’s authorial voice. Curiously, it is perhaps his early society novels — Vivien Grey, The Young Duke and Contarini Fleming — which seem most familiar today. In their apolitical silver•forkery they are the collateral ancestors of Wilde, Waugh and Wodehouse.
Unlike these writers, however, Disraeli admitted the existence of corporeal models for the characters of his early fiction — this does not diminish his achievements, it merely alters them. He becomes, indeed, a great caricaturist rather than a mediocre novelist. Reading Disraeli’s society novels will not enlarge your scope of human sympathy, it will perhaps even earn you the misguided sympathy of the self•appointed cognescenti who see you reading them. Disregard them.
Which other Victorian premier could possibly have written that, “there is no fascination so irresistable to a boy as the smile of a married woman”? Admirers of Wilde though should beware, for they will soon confess themselves disappointed in their hero’s faculty of invention. For he was anticipated, to some extent proleptically superseded, by Disraeli: “Every woman should marry — and no man.” “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
“In married life, three is company, and two none.” “I rather like bad wine, one gets so bored with good wine.” “Bores have succeeded to dragons.” Who, a priori, could tell them apart? For a combination of the wit of Wilde, the malice of Waugh and the political insight of Trollope, Disraeli is unparalleled. Most importantly, he is unique. He did not join a school of literature, he founded one.
Disraeli’s humour vivifies all: “The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity”.
25th May 2006